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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 26, 2018

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE CLAWSON: We're looking forward to bouncing back at home this week after not playing well against Notre Dame last week. Notre Dame played very well and beat us in every phase of the game, and so this week we've really got to get back to playing Wake Forest football, and that means taking care of the ball on offense and improving in the kicking game and playing much better fundamentally on defense. We're going to need to do that.

I think Rice is a very improving football team. They're extremely well-coached and sound on all three sides of the ball, and again, we look forward to being back at home and playing in front of our home crowd and hopefully bouncing back and playing much better than we did a week ago.

Q. I know a couple weeks ago you played Boston College. Could you tell me what was the most difficult thing about defending them?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, the back is really good. They line up in sets that force you to make decisions in terms of committing people to the run, and in doing that, a lot of times you put yourself in some one-on-one situations on the perimeter, and the quarterback for them is very improved and thrown the ball well. So it's just that run-pass dilemma you face against every team except the running back might be one of the best in the country in Dillon, and then, I think they do some really creative things formationally to create space and to create match-ups on your perimeter, and they're able to protect things very well with their play action game. That was the dilemma that we faced. We didn't handle it very well, and as a result they scored a lot of points against us.

Q. I'm writing a story about the nomadic life of assistant football coaches, and was wondering if you could kind of delve into it a little bit. Is it a matter of the factors that lead to coaches jumping from one to another outweigh the factors of security, or what exactly do you think it is?
DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, it's hard to talk in general terms about that. I think every coach has to make decisions on what they want from their career and the work-life balance and what their aspirations are and what their family situation is. You know, so sometimes jobs present great professional opportunities and growth, but sometimes it involves risks, and guys have to make their own decisions in terms of how that affects their family and moving their kids and selling their house and starting their kids in a new school.

So that factors into every move, at least it did for me with my family. There were certainly opportunities at times that maybe I didn't take because it wasn't the best decision for our family at the time.

Q. Is it a tough go generally?
DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, it can be, but I think when you decide to become a college football coach, you sign up for it. It's part of the profession. It's not always an easy part of it, but it -- sometimes you leave by choice and sometimes you're asked to leave not by your choice, and that's just the nature of our profession.

Q. The decision to switch defensive coordinators, what goes into making a decision like that in season, and how do you think your players will respond?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think as a head coach, there's a lot of decisions you've got to make, and every decision has to be what's best for your football program and your football team. These aren't one-week decisions or two-week decisions. This was an evaluation over the past year and a half that we just weren't making the growth and the progress, and we weren't playing to the standard that I feel we should play at. It wasn't improving, and at the point I knew I was going to make a decision, there was no point in waiting.

We have people in our defensive room that are capable of doing this. I just felt it was the best thing for our football team at this time. In 19 years as a head coach, I've never done this before, so it's a little bit of uncharted waters for me, but I just felt it was the right thing for our football team for this week, for this season, and moving forward.

Q. And moving forward, how will things work? Who will call the defense? I know your background is certainly on the offensive side, but will you be more involved on that side of the football?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I have always been involved on that side of the ball as a head coach for the last nine years of my career or last 10 years of my career I haven't called plays, so I've been involved in both sides, and the product on the field is certainly my responsibility, and I was in those meetings and I was part of it.

But we have different duties that are split out among the staff. Dave Cohen has coordinating experience and he's been in that defensive meeting room for five years, and Lisle Hemphill coordinated this defense at Stony Brook. It's the same -- basically the same -- a lot of similar terminology and concepts, and so the two of them are really running the meetings, and they both have coordinating experience and have kind of divvied up those jobs between the two of them.

Q. In terms of improving the defense, as you go through this decision, what are you hoping this will result in, either improvements this week or gradually in the coming weeks?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I mean, you want improvement. You said it. To think that -- any time that you're struggling like we were, it's not one person. Coach Sawvel is a really good football coach and worked extremely hard, and the kids liked him. He worked his butt off, and it certainly wasn't for a lack of effort.

But I just want to get back to playing better fundamentally, making sure that we get lined up, making sure we're sound against the run and just becoming a better fundamental football team on defense. I just felt we were getting away with some of the things we did here over the first few years, and it was just getting to the point that it wasn't getting better.

Yes, I expect improvement. Now, to think that you make a change like this and it's magically going to happen, coaches got to coach better, players got to play better, we've got to be more focused, we've got to be more disciplined, we've got to play with lower pad level, we've got to get in better stances. We've just got to get improvement across the board, and it's going to be incremental, and I hope to see some this week, and it's going to be a timely process. We're not going to go from being where we are to being a top-10 defense here in a week. But I do expect us to get better.

Q. Just how the team has responded and what you've seen from the players in this decision and you're obviously moving some things around coaching-wise, just how they've responded?
DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, we'll see in the coming weeks. It's kind of new. But again, we have good coaches here, and we've had two good practices, but we're just two days into this, three days into it. I'm more concerned that we get better over the next two months.

And I think anytime something like this happens, it's a little bit of a shock to the system for the players, but again, those are decisions you've got to make as a head coach, and they're certainly not fun to make. But you always have to do what you feel is best for the program.

I told the players before it came out, and we're moving forward.

Q. You said it was kind of uncharted territory for you and also made mention of the notion that it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision, and to get back to some of those things that you're looking to clean up, what are some of those pillars that you're looking to right now as you get this staff together, what are some of those pieces that you really want to hone in on and zero in on that you're seeing on film the last few games?
DAVE CLAWSON: I think more than anything, it's just the communication on our defense, making sure when the ball is snapped we have all 11 guys playing the same defense, in their correct stance, in their proper alignment, and their eyes where they're supposed to be. If we do that and we end up giving up plays because a team is better than us or we lost a match-up, those are things -- that's football, you can live with that. But I just want to see us aligned, in stances, with our cleats in the ground and our eyes where they should be and making sure we're playing defenses that all 11 guys are on the same page.

Q. Talk about your run offense last week; you rushed a lot of yards against Notre Dame and Notre Dame has a great defense. Did you think that would be something you guys will use throughout the season, your run offense?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, we want to be balanced on offense, and we certainly were being defended in a way against Notre Dame that we were struggling to throw the ball, but they were defending us in a way that we had some opportunities to run it, and we're good up front, we have good running backs, and we've been very productive running the ball all year.

What we've got to do is we've got to start throwing it better. Earlier in the season, game 1 we threw it well against Tulane and didn't run it well, and now four games into it, I think we're running it better than we throw it. We want to be balanced, and again, we struggled to throw it a little bit against Notre Dame. We ended up running it more, and hopefully we can keep that production while throwing it a little bit better this week.

Q. How do you prepare for a Rice team that you have never played? I know you went from an ACC schedule to an independent game and now back to a Conference USA game. How do you prepare for that?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, it's like any week. You watch the film. It's a new staff. The new coach, Coach Bloomgren, came from Stanford, and they do some very creative things on offense involving tight ends, fullbacks, swings, motions. It's very well thought out. They're very multiple on defense and extremely well-coached on special teams.

Every week is a new challenge. Certainly the style of offense that we're facing with a lot of their insert plays, and again, the formations and the way they create surfaces to run certain plays, they're very good at it.

So again, all the communication on our defense and being on the same page and fitting things correctly is going to be extremely important for us this week.

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